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Potato Week: Week 37 of BigBarn’s Food weeks

Potatoes are cheap, nutritious and naturally fat free. Great, versatile, food. A natural source of fibre and contribute to your recommended daily intake of several vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C and B6. Vitamin B6 has several important functions, including contributing to normal red blood cell formation, normal functioning of the nervous system and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.

So why is it then that over recent years the humble potato has had a bad wrap? Which seems ridiculous considering it is a staple food for most of the world. From mash, baked, jacket, boiled and in salads, it is one food that never disappoints and is almost expected at every meal.

All year round veg

Ten interesting Potato facts
1. Potatoes were first eaten more than 6,000 years ago by indigenous people living in the Andes mountains of Peru.
2. The Incas measured time by how long it took for potatoes to cook.
3. Religious leaders denounced the potato because it wasn’t mentioned in the Bible.
4. Potatoes are the world’s fourth food staple – after wheat, corn and rice.
5. Potatoes are grown in more than 125 countries
6. Every year enough potatoes are grown worldwide to cover a four-lane motorway circling the world six times.
7. China is the world’s largest potato producer.
8. Namibians each eat an average of 110 kilograms of potatoes every year – not quite as much as the Germans consume.

https://lovepotatoes.co.uk/

9. In 1778 Prussia and Austria fought the Potato War in which each side tried to starve the other by consuming their potato crop.
10. During the Alaskan Klondike gold rush of the 1890’s, potatoes were so valued for their vitamin C content that miners traded them for gold.

You can even join the food industry and grow your own the Crop for the Shop by selling excess produce to your local shop on the BigBarn map flagged with a rosette. All helping build a social, local, food industry to replace the ant-social national one.

If you have a favourite recipe using British produce, and would like the chance to win a prize, please video your recipe and add it to KIS (Keep it Simple) Cookery. Please have a look at existing videos here and try and keep your video less than 2 minutes long, like the one below.